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The All Island Grid Study represents a comprehensive assessment of the power system on the island of Ireland to accommodate significant renewable energy penetration (including variable RE as well as dispatchable RE resources) by 2020. The study is divided into four “workstreams:” resource assessment, portfolio screening study, dispatch study, network study, and costs and benefits. The results include the climate change and energy security impacts, as well as the investment costs, associated with the RE scenarios.

This report provides a concise global overview of grid integration challenges and emerging solutions, covering topics such as supply-side flexibility innovations, flexibility from distributed generation, curtailment, transmission and distribution system planning, and electricity market design. The report draws on experience from several jurisdictions where renewables provide 20%–40% of electricity generation, with particular emphasis on experiences in Germany, Denmark, and California. The report also references actions by developing countries (China, India, and South Africa).

This report describes state-of-the-art practices with respect to variable generation integration. The report is predominantly based on an extensive literature review and includes highlights of ancillary service requirements for distributed generation in Germany and Spain. Pages 167 – 177 contain information on regional ancillary service practices in the United States.

In 2011, the California Independent System Operator (CAISO) began a stakeholder engagement process to develop a market-based ramping product. The stakeholder engagement process will also help inform how ramping costs could be allocated to generation and demand. The CAISO website includes information on the initiative status, current meetings, and tariff and policy development.

This report estimates the storage required to enable PV penetration up to 50% in California (with renewable penetration over 66%), and quantifies the complex relationships among storage, PV penetration, grid flexibility, and PV costs due to increased curtailment. The authors find that storage needs depend strongly on the amount of other flexibility resources deployed. With very low-cost PV (three cents per kilowatt-hour) and a highly flexible electric power system, about 19 gigawatts of energy storage could enable 50% PV penetration with a marginal net PV levelized cost of energy (LCOE) comparable to the variable costs of future combined-cycle gas generators under carbon constraints.

This is the 8th annual report from the United States Department of Energy’s Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) on demand response and advanced metering in the United States, based on publicly available information and interviews with market participants and industry partners. The assessment reviews penetration rates of advanced metering and communications technologies; existing demand response and time-based rate programs; annual resource contributions from demand resources; the potential for demand response as a quantifiable, reliable resource for regional planning; steps that have been taken in regional transmission planning and operations to ensure demand resources are provided equitable treatment as a quantifiable, reliable resource; and regulatory barriers to improved customer participation in demand response programs.

This case study is based on interviews with PG&E (a California utility) and explores the institutional circumstances surrounding the implementation of PG&E’s SmartRate™ dynamic rate program. The case study focuses on implementation and procedural challenges, reactions and perceptions of stakeholders involved, and lessons learned. The case study is not intended to evaluate the program but offers insight into the internal workings, attitudes, and relationships of a utility successfully implementing a demand response program.

This report provides policymakers with a detailed look at a fourteen regulatory, policy, market-based, and load-targeting mechanisms that are emerging as effective practices for increasing the use of demand side resources. Based on research in several countries, the highlighted mechanisms—some aimed at vertically-integrated power sectors, some at liberalized market systems, and some at both—are designed to break down the economic and institutional barriers to investment in clean energy resources on the customer’s side of the meter. Specific suggestions include mandating time-varying pricing structure, encouraging implementation of demand side management technologies through incentives and mandates, and enabling financing mechanisms and markets for development of these systems, all as a part of guiding the transformation toward improved demand side management in the power system.

This report examines how demand side resources could be used to facilitate the integration of wind and solar resources into the bulk power system, identifies barriers that currently limit the use of demand response, and suggests factors that can assist decision makers in assessing alternative strategies for integrating wind and solar resources in the bulk power system. The study examines the role of the widespread deployment of Advanced Metering Infrastructure and smart grid systems to mass-market customers in managing the integration of variable RE, primarily in the context of United States power systems. It also assesses how market and regulatory practices can be modified to better enable demand response technologies to facilitate variable RE integration.

This study explores the technical details of cycling coal plants, including the problems that can emerge from operating coal plants as intermediate and peaking plants, and which types of technical and operating modifications are needed to enhance flexibility. The document includes a review of the implications of costs and emissions and the replicability of the measures employed at the case study plant.

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Interested in partnering through Greening the Grid to receive technical assistance on grid integration? Please contact us (greeningthegrid@nrel.gov) to learn more and explore opportunities for collaboration.

Greening the Grid is supported by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and is managed through the USAID-NREL Partnership, which addresses critical aspects of advanced energy systems including grid modernization, distributed energy resources and storage, power sector resilience, and the data and analytical tools needed to support them.